Lock-jawed

What I want is not for myself. I live for others because it's the right thing to do. I put myself through this crippling pain not because it's fun. Not because I like it. Not because it's easy. Because it's the only thing that makes me feel whole. I am a person, with values, morals, desires, needs, and it's so easy to walk around with a switch on the back of your head, brainwashed, away from reality and yourself. I won't do that.  I don't have to prove myself to anyone but myself.  I have to live with me for the next century, so my approval is the only one that matters. I have high standards to live up to, high expectations, and also incredible potential. Why am I punished, whipped to a bleeding pulp, for being real, while those with fake faces and shoes are put on pedestals? Why do I have to be trapped under this weight while pretending I'm floating on air, a smile to my classmates, because I can't tell them what's going on at home, what's going on in my phone, what's going on in my mind, what hurdles I have to jump to keep myself? Why are others, and circumstances resulting from forces unknown, trying to destroy me when my life is only about construction?


I can tell my peers about you, but they don't take us seriously. "Oh," they say. Or they laugh. Or give me that look, that, "Ok, yeah, right. Whatever." They don't get it. They never will. No one ever will. I don't think they need to, and eventually, they won't matter.  They're stock characters.  A sort of madness, more intense than before, has taken over me. I become angry, because I can't go home to you. I can send a message with my fingers, but, that's not the same as being able to run into your arms, tears streaming down my face, words not found and unneeded. So I'll work until I die, so my plans will include you in them. I'm not perfect, please don't ever think I am. But I need you, so much, so very much, I can't express it, because you are you, and I will never find another person quite as special, quite as perfect for me.  I don't know what's going to happen in the middle of these two pieces of bread, between now and then, but at the end, we will be together. I'm going to marry you, one day.  Even without having to cut the engagement ring out of your stomach, love. My snowy cat, I wish I had the words, the dialect, the language, the vernacular to show what courses through my veins, the substance of my cells, the glue between my soul and body.

No, you'll never be alone/When darkness comes/I'll light the night with stars